


It's called 'symbiosis', okay

by ditty (Triple_A)



Series: Fast Little Nonsenses [4]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: A little bit it's touch and go, Abusive Parents, And also not that big an idiot, Bullying, Gavin Reed Backstory, Gavin Reed Not Being an Asshole, Gavin Reed is Bad at Feelings, Gavin Reed is a Good Friend, Hugs, Touch-Starved, Touch-Starved Gavin Reed, Trans Tina Chen, and other forms of physical touch, he is an idiot but also kinda competent, im in love with the concept, listen i write a lot of touch starved gavin ok, not detailed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-07-12 03:04:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19939180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triple_A/pseuds/ditty
Summary: Gavin and Tina are on-and-off friends, finding each other whenever convenience called for it and drifting apart when time decided to.Gavin gives Tina a sense of normalcy, a place to recognize herself.In turn, Tina patches Gavin up every (inevitable) time he has to take a hit and keeps him company.It works.: :Man........I just really like the idea of a Tina and Gav childhood friendship and I'm combining that with the fact that Gavin also desperately needs a hug.





	It's called 'symbiosis', okay

He can't remember the last time he got hugged.

He realizes in passing this when he's sitting with Tina in the school courtyard during lunch, one of the few calm days where they're left alone for once. He's watching a few of the more flouncy couples giggle and coo from each other's laps with an air of faint disgust, while Tina, from besides him, scratches along in her maths notebook, occasionally biting at the eraser end of her pencil in thought. The metal rim is already dented and twisted.

There's a shrill little giggle from one of the more irritating couples, all over each other like piles of jello and twice as sickening sweet, and even watching them makes Gavin stomach churn and the rest of him shudder. The idea of that much touch, clambering all over each other like-like-stag beetles in a fight, (he saw it on a documentary the night before) made something beneath his hoodie squirm. The last time someone even remotely made contact with him that wasn't completely violent in nature, not counting the teacher who would drag him out of fights by the collar, was Tina, who for some reason self-appointed herself to be his personal doctor when it came to his many scrapes and wounds. And even though, it was fleeting and hesitant-they were friends because it was convenient, nothing more, and she knew that as much as him. Symbiosis.

A clatter jerks him out of his thinking; Tina had thrown her pencil down with a dramatic flourish against the notebook in frustration.

"Fuck it, I fucking hate calc." She declares with a huff. "Isaac Newton is the devil."

"You say that like he's still alive," Gavin jokes, as he clambers down from where he sits on the picnic table to actually sit on the bench next to her. "And calc isn't that bad, you're just a baby."

"I'm a baby who's bad a calc, what's your point." She complains, as she edges over to give him space. To any person who didn't know any better, it'd look like they were dating-but absolutely not. Gavin didn't get punched in the face to defend Tina for nothing, and likewise, Tina didn't fiercely defend and argue for him in front of angry teachers for nothing. They were partners in crime, associates, and the closest thing to 'friends' as Gavin could think he could get.

"And absolutely, he's still alive. He figured out physics of the world, he could probably figure out a ritual to let him haunt the earth forever. He's probably laughing at us right now."

"If he was a ghost, he'd probably have better things to do besides haunting some baby high schooler who can't do math."

She places a hand on her chest in mock affront. "Gavin, my good bitch, I'm baby but I'm also a goddamn _delight._ What on EARTH could be worth more than doing just that??"

"Running from the ghostbusters." He deadpans, and she snorts and tosses the notebook on the table behind them.

"Nice reference, old man."

"I'm sorry I'm good at movies."

"On my Netflix account!"

They squabble a little more like this, falling into the comforting pattern of bickering without risks. Tina had never had any siblings, nor had her parents ever been anything short of loving, albeit somewhat strict. Regardless, she felt stifled, with a muffle on her passions for what was expected and an alien relationship with her identity. It closed her off, and she was still closed off, but at least there was Gavin to give things a semblance of the normality she wanted.

For Gavin, Tina was someone who wouldn't hurt him, because one: she didn't know how, and two: she had no reason to do so.

Finally, she throws her hands up when he pulls up calculus again. "If you're so good at it, why don't you do it!" She says, jokingly, and Gavin looks her dead in the eye with a grin.

"Challenge accepted, bitch." He smirks, and takes the notebook and pencil. Against all odds, he was okay at his classes, calculus included, and to his relief all the problems on the page are ones he knows he can do. Deriving, time consuming but in the end doable. "Damn, can't do derivation? That's like, one-oh-one type stuff."

"Ugh, don't get on my ass about this Gav." She groans. "You know damn well I can't understand Mr. Shadwell through his accent. If it's so easy for you then show me how to do it."

"Sorry, sorry. Here, look-" She leans against him, watching over his shoulder as he writes out the process. Using arrows to demonstrate the movement and progression of the numbers. "-The exponent of 'x' gets carried down, right, to multiply to the 'x'. Meanwhile the exponent gets carried down by one."

"What about that one method he told us? The, 'f of x plus h, minus f of h,' or something."

"This is a shortcut, it's way easier. I'm pretty sure Shadwell doesn't teach this until integration, which is fucking stupid."

"That old cad!"

"I know, right? Here, try this next one." He watches as she slowly scratches out the numbers, using arrows to mark the process. It wasn't a particularly more difficult one than the one he had just shown, but even so she took her time. "Yeah, you got it."

"Fuck yeah, dude! God, I've been hung up on this forever." She sighs, grins, and shoves the notebook back into her backpack. The bell must be about to ring, Gavin thinks. Tina was always good at predicting such things. "Maybe you're actually just the ghost of Newton is disguise."

"If I were Newton, I'd have better things to do besides haunt you and teach you calc." He snorts, and she elbows him. On cue, the bell rings, the swarm of students making their way into the building. "Time to enter the hive."

"See you after school. Don't die."

"Yeah, whatever."

* * *

"'Don't die'." Gavin grumbles in a sing-song voice later, voice muffled from the jacket sleeve he presses to his face, as Tina is wiping the grime away from the scrape on his knee. "It really would've sucked if those were your last words to me, you know that?"

"Shut up, idiot. I didn't think-you know." She huffs, but her voice is shaky, though her hands don't tremble as she digs into her bag and finds the scrunched-up tube of anti-biotic ointment, the ink printing on it smudged and fading from how often it was used. "Fucking Avery Matthews. He's a stupid little prick hiding behind daddy's big money, I didn't think he actually had it in him to get his hands dirty. Jumping you straight after school." The venom in it is softened by the way she tends to him, carefully spreading the ointment and applying a band-aid as neatly as she can.

"At least he was nice enough to also drop that brand new knife he was so proud of. What's the point about bragging about an expensive-ass knife if you can't even use it?" Said knife was currently sitting heavy and awkward in his pants pocket, pressed uncomfortably against his thigh. Logically, he should probably pawn it, it wasn't like he couldn't do with the cash, but some part of him wanted the satisfaction of chucking it into the river and watching it skip.

She snorts without mirth. "Anywhere else hurt? You okay?"

"Besides the big, fuck-off cavern he sliced across my face? Peachy." He can feel the adrenaline of the fight fading off, the stinging rawness of the cut on his nose making itself known. His free hand grips the handle of a broken green bottle, clenched so hard he can feel the hard press of the cool glass against his palm. "It's still bleeding. Should I be worried?"

"Eh...probably." She bandages the scrape, and moves to tug the edge of the sleeve away. "Come on, lemme see."

He pulls away, still holding the jacket stubbornly to his face. He can feel the warmth of blood seeping through it, warming his stiff fingers. "There's no point, Tina. You can't hide a wound this big from my parents."

"Yeah, but it'll get infected otherwise."

"Who gives a shit? Maybe I'll finally die." He snorts, but immediately feels guilty at the way Tina's face twists for an instant into some kind of awful anguish. Pity. "Fine, fine. M'sorry."

"Just-you really need to stop making enemies with every asshole who says something vaguely-slur like at us. I can take a few hits for once, you fucking maniac." Her breath hitches as he pulls the jacket away, wincing as it sticks a little to his face from the dried blood. "Shit, Gav. I think you're gonna have to go to a doctor. A real doctor."

"Thanks for the diagnosis, Nurse Chen."

"Fuck you, dude."

"I'm gay, but thanks."

It makes her laugh, at least, a breathy little chuckle that barely hides the sob it overlaps. He sees her hands tremble against her lap, opening and closing against nothing, and then-

The hug isn't sudden, exactly. She moves slowly, as if he's made of glass and would break if she wasn't careful, first pulling him by the collar before wrapping arms, tight, around his shoulders. He can feel her knuckles dig into his back from where they twist in his shirt, and no matter how good she is at quieting her sobs he can feel the way they shake in her ribs, pounding like a bird in a too-small cage against him.

And-it's warm, and he's almost surprised by it, like he'd forgotten that humans were supposed to warm in the first place. Their forest-behind-Tina's-house, their hideout, the second home that had sheltered them throughout their childhood was cool and dry, thanks to the leaf litter and the grove of trees that twisted around and above them, muting the light from the setting sun and the house only a few meters from the edge of the trees. But the night chill that was slowly setting in was brushed away, carelessly, by Tina's arms around him.

With a trembling arm, he reaches up, unsure as he raises his hand to hover over the small of her back-

and instead brings it to his face, pressing knuckles into his mouth to stifle the trembling cries that threaten to leave him. The dark sky above him is slowly blurred by tears that don't fall, because if he lets them fall, they'd hit the cut and it'd hurt and burn and then he'd never stop crying, and he didn't cry. Crying was what little kids did and kids with something to lose did, not kids who weren't ready to risk it all for something or someone. So he bites at the inside of his cheek until he starts tasting blood again, and vehemently curses at himself like a mantra until the pressure behind his eyes recede and his heart stops pounding.

They'd have to go soon, Tina's parents would come looking and if they saw him like this, looking every bit the hooligan they branded him as behind his back, they'd never let Tina hang out with him again. _Bad influence,_ as ever.

But he doesn't want Tina to let go yet, not for the strange warmth that spreads through him, or the way he feels something in his chest start to shake and ache, or the way he thinks he could dissolve like this, in her arms.

To her credit, Tina doesn't.


End file.
